Youths challenge the French state

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=0TBMNM00S0QNBQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/11/02/wfrance02.xml
Symbols of the French state, including policemen, firemen and postmen, are under intensified attack from disaffected youths as the country faces the worst race relations crisis in its history.

Hardly a night passes without gangs — many of them from immigrant families — attacking police cars, buses and emergency rescue teams.

Firefighters attempt to extinguish a burning bus
Firefighters attempt to extinguish a burning city bus

Yesterday, the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur published a confidential report drawn up by a public service trade union, the CGT, containing scores of eye-witness accounts of brutal attacks on public servants who work in the worst suburbs, or "banlieues", from gas board workers to staff from the electricity company.

Its publication follows the revelation that attacks on police have soared this year, with some 14 a day, and a growing number of incidents in which officers have been lured into ambushes.

This has prompted a warning that the day France witnesses the lynching of a policeman is not far off.

The CGT report painted a graphic picture of violence: blocks of cement dropped on paramedic crews; washing machines pushed off balconies on to fire engines; electricity company agents too scared to cut off customers who have not paid bills, after being attacked with knives, guns and fists.
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On the Right and Left, politicians have accused youths of singling out symbols of the state, in an attempt to show that they, and not the French republic, are the law in their run-down neighbourhoods.

Shortly after three weeks of rioting that gripped French suburbs last November, Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister and favourite to be the Centre-Right candidate for the French presidency next year, said the violence, which left scores of businesses in ruins and nearly 10,000 cars burned, was above all "territorial". Gangs were trying to seize control of a piece of territory, "and rule it by force", Mr Sarkozy said in an interview with Le Point magazine.

Mr Sarkozy is admired and loathed in equal measure for his vocal pledges to crack down on such "scum", as he called rioters last year, and his policies of sending heavily armed police units into the worst neighbourhoods, in a show of force.

This week, a year later, Le Nouvel Observateur found a clear echo in the views of a politician on the opposite end of the spectrum, the Communist mayor of Sevran, a poor north-eastern Paris suburb. Youths who burned buses or attacked firemen were only hurting their own families and neighbours, who would be deprived of the few remaining public services, said the mayor, Stephane Gatignon. "For them it's a way of showing they exist, that this is their home, their territory."

The banlieues' inhabitants include millions of immigrants. Some police representatives, notably the small, fringe trade union Action Police, squarely blame radical Muslim imams for whipping up the violence, talking of an "intifada" in the banlieues. But a leaked report by the French police intelligence service, the Renseignements Généraux (RG), concluded last year that Islamists had "no role in setting off the violence", which it described as a "popular revolt" against the authorities.

A more recent report by the RG, leaked to Le Figaro last month, also reported, in a tone of some relief, that rumours of angry youths in different suburbs linking up in organised networks were not true.

A close study of the CGT trade union report also revealed a less than political motivation for attacks. Many workers from the gas board, electricity or telephone companies reported being attacked after accidentally witnessing drug deals, or stumbling on caches of drugs or weapons belonging to criminal gangs.

Crime in the banlieues is described as a part of life, and while billions of pounds have been spent on some estates many remain grim concrete widernesses with unemployment at 20 per cent, or double the national average, with youth unemployment still higher.

david.rennie@telegraph.co.uk

 

I fart in your general direction!

 

I realize you were atwitter with excitement over getting to post this story, but in the future could you at least take time to edit out the photo cutlines and advertisement disclaimers?

 

Way too complicated for Poindexter.

 

I also guess Poin skipped over this sentence:

But a leaked report by the French police intelligence service, the Renseignements Généraux (RG), concluded last year that Islamists had "no role in setting off the violence", which it described as a "popular revolt" against the authorities.

 

Notice it took 10 graphs for the reporter to say it was Muslim youth.

Awful peaceful religion they're practicing.

 

What on earth?

Those are youths who are rioting. France is having a youth problem, nothing else. Youths riot nightly, not Muslims. Read the news.

 

Wait a minute, did poin just speak in defense of Muslims?
Does the world end in the next hour?

 

I think he was being saracastic.

Anyway, the kids rioting in France aren't Methodists or Wiccans.

 

Excuse me, did you say "yout's?"

 

I think that's spelled "utes"

 

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,20691635-5006301,00.html
Costello demands hard line on terrorists
FEDERAL Treasurer Peter Costello has lashed out at home-grown terrorists and demanded a hard line against potential Australian bombers.
Responding to reports about a plot to plant explosives in Sydney's King Cross, Mr Costello told The Advertiser that young Australian terrorists had been recruited by hardline religious terror groups that operated a "culture of death".


November 03, 2006 01:15am
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"They glorify death, this is what Jihadists do, they glorify death both for themselves and other people," he said.

Mr Costello warned that security intelligence needed to be constantly improved to prevent an attack on Australian soil. "You look around Australia, a terrorist will see a target wherever there are innocent people," he said.

Mr Costello is a key member of the government's National Security Committee, which oversees Australia's strategy to tackle terrorism."Unfortunately in Australia, there are people who have been recruited and radicalised and are prepared to commit crimes," Mr Costello said.

"These, by the way, were kids who were born in Australia, their name was not Abdul, it was Jack."

Meanwhile, NSW police yesterday admitted they had headed off a plan to bomb Sydney's Kings Cross.

The Advertiser yesterday revealed that Sydney woman Rabiah Hutchison, the mother of two brothers arrested in Yemen on terrorism and gun running charges, was closely linked to an alleged terror cell accused of planning to bomb a number of targets in Sydney.

NSW Counter Terrorism Commander Nick Kaldas said a number of terrorism cases had been "confused" and the Ayub brothers were not involved in the Kings Cross plot.

Mr Kaldas confirmed a Muslim convert was in jail facing charges of conspiring to murder persons relating to a Kings Cross plot but the person had no links with Ms Hutchison or the Ayub brothers.

Police allege Jill Courtney, 26, made the plans with convicted murderer Hussan Kalache, 28, over nine months to March 23 this year.

It is alleged the pair met while Kalache was in jail.

Courtney was arrested by counter-terrorism police at Casula on March 24.

After she appeared in court, police sources said Courtney had obtained information on how to build an explosive device and made telephone calls in relation to the planned bombing.